Author's Note: Thanks again for the feedback! Next update might take a little bit longer as I'll be out of town for awhile, although it's not like I update very quickly anyway... Anyway, lots of Klavier this chapter. Read on!


Titration by HawkofNavarre

Chapter 4

How to Make Your Case


Ema wouldn't have ever thought that her years being stuck as a detective would've been useful for her future, but now that she was certified as a forensics investigator, she was glad she had accepted the promotion. She had always known that she was going to work in law enforcement, hence why she had joined the police academy after failing the forensics exam for the first time. If she couldn't be the one examining evidence at the crime scene, she at least wanted to be near it. Then it was her intelligence that got her promoted to a detective within the next few years and instead of guarding the crime scene, she was actually knee-deep in it. That was supposed to be better until she realized how close she actually was to the evidence, yet couldn't perform any scientific tests on them. It was like having candy in your hands and not getting to eat it. The bitterness chipped away at her happiness slowly, worsening with every letter she received that started with "We regret to inform you..."

It was only now that she really appreciated having moved up to detective. If she hadn't pursued it, she would've been stuck in the lab, only occasionally out in the field to process evidence, and would never really get the full picture of the case. Now, with the experience of a detective and the expertise of a forensic investigator, she was an especially valuable asset to the precinct and prosecutors looked forward to working with her. She was able to do all the investigating she liked to put the case together.

Of course, all that also meant having late nights trying to puzzle out what happened in more difficult cases. She had to give the prosecutor the right suspect to prosecute. It did her little good that Dayton was on her forensics team under Gavin. Even after their disastrous last date, he still wanted to date her, despite him now leaving her alone every time she said "no" as per their prior agreement. She was holding firm this time. She had given him the real chance he'd wanted and now they were done.

And that was the other problem. Ema couldn't stand seeing Dayton speak so respectfully to Klavier when she knew he thought so poorly of the prosecutor. At least she had been open about her dislike for him from the beginning. Klavier had always been aware of how she felt, yet they still managed to work together to close cases. She hated seeing someone being so blatantly two-faced towards him.

She exhaled in frustration, trying to not let it get to her. It wasn't like she actually liked Gavin that much, but he was a decent guy and he'd been through enough over the past couple of years. Besides, now wasn't the time to be dwelling on her coworker's crappy personality. He'd gone home for the day (thank god) and it was her job to keep hammering away on this case until all the pieces made sense.

It'd been a couple of days, but she was still trying to verify statements. Obviously nobody admitted to being the killer, but the building had several tenants who were single and living alone, so basically none of them had an alibi for the time of death. Suicide had already been ruled out by the medical examiner who had reported blunt force trauma to the head prior to the fall. But then they also couldn't rule out an accidental fall if the man was disoriented by the time he'd reached the fire escape.

"You're here late, Fräulein Detective," Gavin's voice chimed in from behind her. She glanced towards him briefly, away from the smart board she was staring at with multiple faces of suspects they had pulled up.

"Well, this case isn't going to solve itself," she retorted, unimpressed by his sudden appearance. If there was anyone she saw way too often, it was definitely him. "And what are you doing here?"

"Had to drop off some files from our last case," he explained as she turned back to the board, Klavier hovering behind her. "So this is our suspect pool, ja? Narrowed it down yet?"

She hummed lightly in thought. "Not exactly, but I think it's natural to suspect the ones who live right next to the fire escape considering they should've heard something. The M.E. is still trying to figure out exactly how high he fell from to narrow down which landing he went over, and it doesn't help that basically none of these residents have an alibi," she explained.

"Then we eliminate potential suspects another way," Klavier suggested. "I was reviewing the autopsy report earlier. Cause of death was from the fall, but he sustained a head injury before that, ja?"

"Yeah," she confirmed. Ema's brow furrowed in concentration as she walked around her desk to retrieve said autopsy report, flipping it open to read it again. "The blow was to the base of the skull at the back of the head."

The prosecutor snapped his fingers rhythmically. "And therefore, he was attacked from behind by someone a ways shorter than him, likely a female. Mr. Fehl wasn't a particularly tall man."

"No, he wasn't," Ema agreed, her nose still in the file. "He was only five foot eight. I think you're right." She rushed around to grab her tablet, letting the little computer work its magic at her command. "Scientifically speaking, someone taller or the same height would never be able to project an upward force to his head in the same way. You'd have to be at least four or five inches shorter...meaning our suspect list just shrunk down to three people if we're right."

Ema stared at the faces on her screen: two women and one man. Any one of them could have committed the crime as they all rented apartments that led directly to the fire escape on that side of the building, and they all had a motive regardless of their statements to the police. Garrett Fehl had a history of petty theft and he had been in that building trying to take something.

But what...? she wondered to herself silently. Even more frustratingly, she probably wouldn't be able to solve this case without searching all three apartments for the object he'd been hit with.

"You think you can get me a warrant to search those apartments?" she asked Klavier, dissatisfied with her inability to solve this case right now.

He looked offended that she'd even asked. "Of course I can. Do you doubt me, fräulein?"

"I doubt a lot of things when it comes to you. Like the idea that you have a good sense of fashion," the forensic investigator retorted sharply. She walked over to the digital board and moved the newest suspects to the middle of the screen, looking more closely at their alibis.

Klavier leaned back against her desk, folding his arms as he contemplated the case next to her. "But you accepted my horrible fashion sense, didn't you? You did wear my jacket last night," he reminded her.

"It was cold. I'm not crazy enough to just hang around outside in a dress if I don't have to. I would've much rather had my lab coat," she informed him, snickering. "Well, I think that's it. I can't do anything else without a warrant."

"Yes you can," the prosecutor replied as his brow furrowed in concentration. "You can because we might be able to figure this out without finding the object he was struck with. We may be looking from the wrong angle."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Enlighten me, Gavin."

"The victim, we know, landed on his back, meaning he went over the railing backwards," Klavier explained thoughtfully. "Now, we assume he was pushed because of this fact, but if his murderer had already disoriented him, why would they push him off the side of a building? A disoriented man is easy to fight with. Our suspect would be able to take back what was stolen with ease—without killing a man."

"You think it was an accident," Ema realized, seeing her boss's angle. His logic made a lot of sense. It'd been a long time since she'd last worked on a case this closely with him, considering he didn't do a lot of investigation. It felt a bit different from his usual style of work, which was just doing the prosecuting part of his job and running with it. Then again, it made her curious since he had really dropped off the music scene to pursue law more seriously.

Instead of rummaging through the paper file, Klavier stepped forward and pulled up a digital version of the autopsy. He immediately magnified a statement on the first page. "You see, I've been wondering about this particular comment by the M.E. He died when his head hit the pavement, but he also fractured both his scapulae, and he had 'more than expected' bruising on his back."

She immediately knew what he was referring to, but it was always much more likely when someone fell from a height that the person was pushed. Of course she entertained the possibility first. But it was also true that the injuries sustained by the victim weren't entirely consistent with someone who had just fallen.

"With those injuries, doesn't it almost seem like there was something heavy that fell on top of him?" Ema asked. "It's not easy to fracture the scapulae. But it couldn't be what he stole either. The police came only a few minutes after it happened. Nobody would have had time to haul something that heavy away from the crime scene."

"Nein... I don't think so either..." Klavier agreed, settling back against the table again. Only a second later, he stood up straight abruptly. "Achtung! Unless the object itself moved away!"

Ema was unimpressed by his excited discovery. "Gavin, evidence doesn't just up and walk away on its own."

"No, but humans do," he explained. "This was a disoriented man who clearly stole something if someone was chasing after him. He stumbles away from the scene after he is hit on the back of the head, trying to leave down the fire escape. His assailant gives chase, probably still with the same weapon used earlier. He knows he will be caught by his pursuer, so how does he retaliate?"

"The best defence is an offence," she offered in return. It was then that she caught on to what he was getting at. This was all circumstantial and she couldn't believe he was even suggesting this. "You can't really be..."

"Why don't we test it and find out?" he offered as he stepped away from her. "We're both a little taller than the victim and suspects, but the size ratio matches up well enough. We will use your desk as the railing and the board as the window."

She bit her lip. It seemed like such a crazy idea to entertain, but she'd been through enough trials to know that people could die in extremely convoluted ways...especially when a Wright Anything Agency lawyer was on the case. They always seemed to open up new possibilities. Here Klavier was now doing the same for her before they went to court. As a detective, she had to see it through. After all, she'd just gone on a date with Dayton after he appealed to her inner scientist.

"Alright, let's do it. But we're doing it to my standard," Ema replied firmly, stealing a glance at the clock. It was too late to be arguing with Gavin anyway, getting close to midnight. "That means you're playing the victim without going easy on me. You'd better not half-ass this."

"I wouldn't dream of it, fräulein! We do need a real response out of you—and that means not the response of a law enforcement officer," he quipped back as he began to remove his jacket and stretch out his arms. "You can emulate a female, right, Fräulein Detective?"

At that, Ema strode purposefully over to her desk drawer, retrieving a handful of Snackoos and throwing them at his face.

"Ach! I was just joking, Ema!"

A minute later, they were in their positions, Ema having cleared up her desk a bit just in case Klavier happened to crash into it. She stood on the left side of the board with the prosecutor next to her. He had even removed his stupid giant neck chain in order to get this done, which was to Ema's satisfaction.

He had one hand holding the back of his head as he dramatically stumbled forward. "Ach! I have been stricken!"

She snickered at his foolish acting. "I said not to half-ass it, Gavin, not to pretend you're in some poorly written German soap opera. Who says they've been hit after being hit when there's nobody to say it to?"

He sent her a sort of lazy challenging look. "Would you like me to repeat it until it is to your liking?"

"No. We'll just not act like idiots," Ema said, smirking. She raised the ruler up in her grasp, the stand-in weapon for now, and walked forward after him. "Okay, so I follow you because you're still conscious and have something that belongs to me."

Klavier nodded, posing himself alongside her desk. "Right. Now if I'm trying to leave down the fire escape and you push me off, I fall sideways, so that doesn't work," he deduced in concentration. He turned to her, staring at the foot long ruler in her hand. "Charging you would make no sense if I can clearly see you wielding the same weapon you injured me with earlier. I'm disoriented, but I'm also an experienced thief. I have a good sense of self-preservation. How do I end up on the ground as I do?"

The prosecutor looked between her and the desk for a few long seconds, then raised his hand for her to back up. He took a step to the side, in front of the board and out of her line of vision.

"Come out like you're looking for me," he called to her.

Again, she brought her ruler up as she stepped forward, not seeing Klavier at all.

"Don't think like a cop."

She barely heard the words when she was suddenly swept to the side, strong arms around her. Taking a moment, Ema forced herself to acknowledge the warning her boss had offered her just before he fake-attacked her and resisted the immediate urge to stomp on his foot. Right now, she was just a girl with no self-defense training, trying to get away from this thief.

She had dropped her ruler in the surprise of his attack and she couldn't move her arms with the tight hold he had on her. She grasped at his arms and Ema grunted, pushing back against him. His footing gave as they struggled. She was facing the board now, trying to get loose. In the mindset of a desperate young woman, she continued with the only thing that seemed to be yielding results and pushed hard back against him again.

They traveled backwards, gaining momentum until his legs hit the table and Klavier toppled over, falling back onto her desk with Ema on top of him. She could feel his chest rising and falling against her back, his breath tickling her neck. His hold her had loosened and she'd automatically grabbed onto his forearms so as to not lose her balance. Her heart was pounding from the effort—the effort, not the awareness of Klavier's solid form beneath her or the feeling of his arms around her waist.

"Ach, I think I just fractured my shoulder blades," he chuckled from behind her and Ema forced the heat—just heat because there was no way she was blushing—off her face. "I'd say the possibility exists now, wouldn't you?"

Klavier sat up, basically holding her in his lap until he steadied both of them. When her feet hit the ground, she shook her head, trying to snap herself back into concentrating on the case at hand. She immediately approached the board, partially to pull up the suspect list and partially to move as far away from Gavin as she possibly could, even wheeling the screen back a little further.

"Right, yeah, okay, very possible," she agreed, attempting to keep her voice from shaking. "We can assume his killer fell with him and ended up surviving since Fehl broke their fall, but we still have no idea who it was."

Ema felt Klavier's chest press against her shoulder as he reached over her to press on the crime scene photo and she skittishly moved out of his way. God, did he seriously have no sense of personal space?

Stepping over to occupy the space she'd just vacated, Klavier zoomed in on the photo. "There was one other thing that bothered me," he explained, completely oblivious to all the discomfort he was causing her. He moved the visual over to their victim's hand. "He is wearing dark gloves like a good thief does, but what is that extra bulk he has around his fifth finger?"

Her mouth dropped open in disbelief. She couldn't believe she had missed something so obvious. A thief would never wear jewellery to rob a place, but hiding it underneath clothes was a quick way to stash it. Suddenly, she was very angry at herself for not realizing that earlier, even after running his prints and finding his criminal record. "So that's what he stole."

He pulled up a photo of the victim's body during processing in the medical examiner's office. The gloves were off in this image and the ring around Garret's pinky was visible. "And it looks like our suspect couldn't remove it before the police arrived. Look how tightly it's fitting around his finger," Klavier added, his voice smug.

"Still not as tight as your shirt," she snarked back, unamused by his arrogance. Just because he'd helped her with the case...jeez.

Klavier grinned, leaning over in that flirty way he always did. "I'm glad you're paying such close attention to me, Fräulein Detective." He didn't let her respond as he spun and flicked a hand of farewell at her. "Run the prints off that ring and we'll have our perp. Get me that tonight and I will have your warrant in the morning."

She stood there, dumbfounded, watching his retreating back as he called a "goodnight!" back at her. A moment later, Ema let out a growl of frustration. She'd let him get in the last word again.

Fuming, Ema looked back at the board to locate where they'd stored that damn ring. Dusting the thing with fingerprint powder was the only way she was going to get her mind off this entire damn night.


Klavier made good on his word. The warrant was ready as soon as she walked into the office that day and she was basically out the door again in a few minutes. She had a team of officers with her to help search the apartment and they stormed the place, finding the evidence they were looking for almost immediately. It was classic; the girl had a child's baseball bat in her closet which matched the weapon the victim had been bludgeoned with, there was a picture of the woman's late husband wearing the ring that was found on the victim's hand, and the young woman had basically spilled her guts the moment an officer started to process the baseball bat. Things had more or less gone down the way she and Klavier had deduced, but Ema still needed to get the girl back to the precinct to get an actual full statement.

The forensic investigator was tired. She hadn't slept well last night at all, if an accumulated one hour of shut-eye over restless tossing and turning could even be labeled as sleep. Seeing Klavier's vulnerabilities a few weeks ago had humanized him, but yesterday, she had been forced to acknowledge that he was a human man. It was starting to sound stupider and stupider every time she thought about it, but hell if it wasn't true. The last time she'd really had a boyfriend was in college. They had dated for two years and Ema had been in love...until she hadn't been after she'd realized that he simply couldn't tolerate her love of science.

Still, that didn't take away from the relationship they'd shared in both the emotional and physical capacity. After that relationship had ended, she'd resolved to solely work towards her dream; she didn't need a man holding her back. But she'd foolishly agreed to work out the crime yesterday, and it had reminded her of all the things she used to feel in her boyfriend's arms: love, wanted, and cared for...

It seriously put her over the edge.

How could she be working on a crime and have wound up, of all things, thinking about how it felt to be in Klavier's arms? She didn't mind working with him as a prosecutor as much anymore, but to know that he was having a physical effect on her in some capacity irritated her to no end. Then again, if it hadn't been Klavier, she was almost certain it would have been someone else. Ema did just fine without a significant other and was nowhere near interested in finding one unless a younger version of the Chief Prosecutor somehow walked into her life, but there were definitely things she missed about having one. The easy, playful conversations, the comfortable embrace after a hard day, and confidant who could just listen...they were things she could live without, though life would be a bit better with them present. It was a different feeling from what Lana could offer, especially since her sister had a family of her own.

For the first time in years, Ema was actually craving the distraction paperwork would provide.

"Fräulein Detective!"

I just can't catch a break, can I? she thought to herself in exhaustion. She whirled around to meet her boss's eyes as her fellow officers guided their perp to a squad car. "What are you doing here, Gavin?" Ema winced as she heard the shriek of teenage girls coming from the sidewalk. The girls always went where he did.

"I came to see the fruits of my labour, ja? I see you put that warrant to good use," he replied cheerfully. "Were we correct?"

Ema nodded. She wasn't going to get rid of him any faster if she was resisting his inquiries. "Basically. We found a kid's baseball bat in her closet. It matches the victim's wound perfectly. She told us it was her late husband's bat from childhood. He passed away a few months ago, so when she saw our victim stealing his ring from her mantel, she hit him and followed him out onto the fire escape."

She leaned to the side to look around him abruptly, squinting at the familiar presence standing outside the tape with the rest of the fangirls. It was that brunette who had been standing in the hall at the concert a couple of weeks ago. She wasn't screaming like the rest of the females (and some males, actually), but she was staring rather intently at Gavin.

"Fräulein Detective? Hello?"

Honestly, that woman must have a real hard-on for Gavin if she was pining for him near his dressing room and at crime scenes. It wasn't super uncommon, really, for teenage girls with too much time of their hands, but the celebrity stalking had lessened a bit after Klavier had stopped touring with the Gavinners. Apparently he still had some hardcore fans.

"Miss Skye? You were saying...?"

Wow, though. If Ema thought back really hard, she vaguely recalled seeing this lady on the day this case had started too. Klavier hadn't stayed too long at the crime scene either. This was one dedicated lady...

"Ema!"

She stood up straight, startled. "Huh?"

On his pretty face, there was an irritated frown. "You were in the middle of explaining what took place?"

"Um, yeah, I was," she replied, dumbfounded. She'd embarrassingly gotten caught drifting off into her own thoughts and she composed herself as much as she could. That definitely hadn't been the type of distraction she'd been seeking.

Quickly, she mumbled through the rest of the details, wanting to get out of here as soon as possible. She wanted to be anywhere but near Klavier Gavin with the old emotions he'd stirred up within her unintentionally, and now it was worse because she'd actually managed to annoy him. Ugh, and just when she'd thought things were getting better with him...

"Well, I suppose I will head back to the Prosecutor's Office and get the case ready. It will be nice to have an easy day of work after so many complicated cases over the last year," he commented with a sigh of relief. She almost wanted to remind him that he was given a lot of their tougher cases since the prosecution office was full of incompetents like Winston Payne or people still trying to find their footing like Sebastian Debeste, but she hardly wanted to risk saying anything else to remind him of the unfriendly relationship they used to share. She was pretty sure he thought she'd just been ignoring him.

He surprised her instead. "I enjoyed puzzling out the case with you last night, Miss Skye," he told her, with a real, genuine smile that wasn't meant to seduce her or anything.

"I—I... Me too," she stuttered out quickly, stunned by his words. Ema looked at the ground, feeling awkward by the sudden change in atmosphere. "I guess we make an alright team..." God, she wished she had some Snackoos.

"The next concert is in a week. I will see you there, ja?" Klavier asked, evidently oblivious to how uncomfortable she was feeling.

"Ja—I mean, yeah!" she sputtered as her face burned. Where the hell were those Snackoos?

He chuckled at her skittishness and stalked off, leaving Ema alone to fume once more. Even when he wasn't intentionally trying to annoy her, he still managed to make her feel off somehow. And then it made her angry at how utterly stupid she was acting.

Did it have to be this hard? At this point, they were almost friends, right? Things shouldn't be this difficult. But the more she thought about his attractive face, his playful demeanor, and warm embrace, the angrier she felt.

Ema turned with a huff, heading back towards the squad car. He was still just a glimmerous fop after all.